"In the present century the traditional assertions of an exclusive possession of absolute truth repel rather than attract many people who seek the wisdom that religions, and other explanations of the ultimate meaning of life, have to offer."

From the statement of key principles for "The Pluralist Model: A Multi-religious Exploration"a conference by the Department of Theology of Birmingham University, UK, Sept. 6-9

The battle over "theology of pluralism"; Pope John Paul I and the pill; keeping an eye on the conclave; Archbishop Denis Hurley reminisces about Vatican II

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.

If the
relationship between Christianity and politics was the burning issue in
Catholic theology in the 1970s and 1980s, with liberation theology forming the
front line, the new mega-issue in the 1990s became the relationship between
Christianity and the world religions.Its battle zone is the so-called “theology of pluralism.”

“Pluralism” is a
complex impulse that takes many different forms, but at its core is the idea
that more than one religion can communicate saving knowledge about ultimate
reality, and no religion has a superior saving knowledge.

In other words,
Christianity can be a true religion,
but not the true religion.

Beginning this
weekend, 40 of the world’s top pluralist theologians are gathering at a unique
summit in Birmingham, England, to ponder the future of their Copernican-style
revolution. The event features English Presbyterian John Hick, Catholic
stalwarts such as Paul Knitter of Xavier University, Jesuit Fr. Roger Haight of
Weston School of Theology, and Chester Gillis of Georgetown University, as well
as Protestants, Muslims, Hindus, Jews, Buddhists, Sikhs and Confucians. All told,
40 scholars from 16 countries are expected.

The view they
represent is theological dynamite, at least from the Christian side. What does
it mean to say that Christ died for all, if the vast majority of human beings
don’t need him to be saved? What’s the point of missionary efforts if being a
Hindu, or a Druid, is just as valid as being Christian?

The questions
help explain the Vatican’s keen interest. The September 2000 document Dominus Iesus, which insisted that
followers of other religions are in a “gravely deficient situation” in
comparison to Christians who alone “have the fullness of the means of
salvation,” was a response to the pluralist movement.

Those with ears
to hear could pick out the rumblings that led to Dominus Iesus in 1996, when Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of
the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, addressed the Latin American
bishops.

Ratzinger called
pluralist theology the fight of the decade: “In some ways [it] occupies today —
with regard to the force of its problematic aspect and its presence in the
different areas of culture — the place occupied by the theology of liberation
in the preceding decade,” he said.

Ratzinger named
names: Hick and Knitter.

Of Hick,
Ratzinger said,“Concepts such as
church, dogma and sacraments lose their unconditional character. ... The notion
of dialogue becomes the quintessence of the relativist creed and the antithesis
of conversion and mission. … The relativist dissolution of Christology, and
even more of ecclesiology, thus becomes a central commandment of religion.”

Ratzinger
accused Knitter of holding that praxis is more important than dogma. Thus for
Knitter, according to Ratzinger, dialogue reduces to an ethical or political
program. This stance, Ratzinger says, is self-contradictory, because without
objective truth, who’s to say any particular ethic is correct?

The bottom line,
in Ratzinger’s judgment, is that pluralism is tantamount to relativism. “Christ
is Lord!” would be a truth for Christians, but not necessarily for Buddhists or
Jews. Such a view, Ratzinger believes, would neuter Christian tradition.

It should be
noted that this is not merely Ratzinger’s personal crusade. Other theologians
are concerned that pluralism goes too far. Many defend some version of a
position known as “inclusivism,” which allows that other religions may contain
saving truths, but are “included” in the salvation won by Christ. In this view,
all religious traditions ultimately converge in, and are perfected by,
Christianity, even if that convergence is eschatological. Some version of this
model is generally held to be implicit in the documents of the Second Vatican
Council (1962-65).

In a draft paper
for Birmingham, Knitter argues that pluralists are not relativists. They accept
universal truth, but not absolute truth.

“This is the pluralist challenge to
traditional religious believers,” Knitter writes. “You can and should continue
to go forth unto all nations to proclaim what you know to be true and good; but
you should not, because you cannot, proclaim that this is the only word, or the
last word, on what is true and good.”

One can discern
Ratzinger’s concern with pluralism in recent appointments at the Congregation
for the Doctrine of the Faith. His new secretary, Salesian Archbishop Angelo
Amato, was one of the primary authors of Dominus
Iesus and the driving force behind the
investigation of Jesuit Fr. Jacques Dupuis, a prominent writer in this field.
Amato studied in India and has a background in Oriental religions. Likewise,
Ratzinger’s under-secretary is an American Dominican theologian, Fr. Augustine
DiNoia, who wrote a well regarded book on religious pluralism in 1992, The Diversity of Religions: A Christian
Perspective.

In other words,
don’t expect the Vatican to let go of this issue. By the same token, the
pluralists don’t seem ready to fold their tents and silently steal away either.

The Birmingham
conference, titled “The Pluralist Model: A Multi-religious Exploration,” is
held under the Department of Theology of Birmingham University, UK, where Hick
teaches, and is co-sponsored by the Journal of Ecumenical Studies of Temple
University.

Over the years I’ve written
often on this theme and come to know some of the thinkers representing the
various positions. I’ll be covering the Sept. 6-9 summit and will have a full
report next week.

For now, I’ll reproduce the
“statement of key principles” the summit’s participants agreed upon in advance,
though it could still be revised. It’s a good synthesis of the pluralist model.
The list, especially points seven and eight, also helps explain why defenders
of conventional Christological and ecclesiological positions find the model
worrisome.

The
pluralist model of religion
Key
principles

1.The religions of the world affirm an ultimate reality which they conceive
of in different ways and which both transcends the material universe and is
immanent within it.

2.Whilst in
itself ultimate reality is beyond the scope of complete human understanding, in
its relation to humanity many claim to have experienced its presence in diverse
ways, including great individuals in supreme revelatory moments that have given
rise to the world’s religions, including the great world religions.

3.The great world religions, including their different and at
times incompatible teachings, are as totalities of scripture, history,
tradition, paradigmatic figures, rituals, creeds and forms of spirituality,
authentic paths to the supreme good.

5.There are however forms of religion, including some based in
the great world religions, which are misused for purposes contrary to those
values.

6.Each person must follow his/her conscience. Therefore the
possibility of conversion is part of the human right to religious freedom.

7.In the present century the traditional assertions of an
exclusive possession of absolute truth repel rather than attract many people
who seek the wisdom that religions, and other explanations of the ultimate
meaning of life, have to offer.

8.Hence, from a pluralist point of view it does not make sense
in the contemporary world to try through missionary activities to convert the
world to one’s own tradition.

9.Interreligious dialogue, as conversations among people who
wish to learn and benefit from one another’s inheritance and insights, should
be the normal way for religions — and ideologies — to relate to each other.

10.Within this dialogue a paramount need is for the religions to
heal any historic antagonisms between them.

* * *

If I weren’t on
my way to Birmingham, I’d be heading for Aachen, Germany, where the Community
of Sant’Egidio is holding its annual inter-religious gathering Sept. 7-9. This
year the theme is “War and Peace: Faiths and Cultures in Dialogue.”

Sant’Egidio
began hosting these gatherings in 1987, after John Paul II’s historic summit of
religious leaders in Assisi in 1986. The community took upon itself the role of
keeping the “spirit of Assisi” alive, and its annual gathering has become one
of the premier vehicles for ecumenical and inter-religious dialogue anywhere in
the world. I’ve attended previous gatherings in Lisbon and Palermo.

Twelve cardinals
are scheduled to take part: Godfried Danneels of Belgium; Karl Lehmann, Friederich
Wetter and Joachim Meisner of Germany; Roger Etchegaray, former president of
the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace; Mario Francesco Pompedda, prefect
of the Apostolic Signatura; Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council
for Promoting Christian Unity; Frédéric Etsou-Nzabi-Bamungwabi of Congo; Ignace
Moussa I Daoud, prefect of the Congregation for Eastern Churches; Peter
Shirayanagi of Japan; Pedro Rubiano Sáenz of Colombia; and Lubomyr Husar of
Ukraine.

Highly
anticipated sessions include a panel on Catholic/Orthodox dialogue that will
feature Etchegaray, Kasper and Bishop Vincenzo Paglia of Terni on the Catholic
side, as well as Metropolitan Kyrill, the number two figure in the Russian
Orthodox hierarchy, and Patriarch Ignatius IV Hazim, the Greek Orthodox
Patriarch of Antioch. A session on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict will
include Gadi Golan, the head of the religious affairs bureau at the
Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
and Tyseer Al-Tamimi, head of the Sharia Court for the Palestinian National
Authority. A fascinating panel on John Paul’s 25th anniversary as
pope will include a rabbi from Paris, an Orthodox metropolitan from Syria, and
an Islamic theologian from Morocco. Two Iraqi bishops plus an Iraqi Sunni and
an Iraqi Shi’ite will discuss prospects for peace in their country. Sr. Helen
Prejean will take part in a panel on abolition of the death penalty.

Sant’Egidio,
which is sometimes called the “U.N. of Trastevere” for its capacity to bring
discordant voices into conversation, will post texts from some of these
presentations on its web site: www.santegidio.org.

* *
*

Last
week I carried an interview with Fr. Diego Lorenzi, the private secretary of
Pope John Paul I, on the 25th anniversary of the pope’s election.
Lorenzi’s recollections summoned others from readers of “The Word from Rome.”
Among other things, a few readers wrote to ask if it was true that prior to
becoming pope, Cardinal Albino Luciani had expressed a positive view of birth
control.

In
short, the answer is yes.

In
1967, when Luciani was still the bishop of Vittorio Veneto, then-Cardinal
Giovanni Urbani of Venice asked him to prepare a position paper for the bishops
of the Triveneto region on artificial contraception, then under study by Pope
Paul VI. The story is told in the superb recent book Papa Luciani: Il Sorriso del Santo, by Andrea Tornielli and
Alessandro Zangrando.

Luciani,
who attended all four sessions of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), had
already been wrestling with the problem. In his diary from his days at Vatican
II, Un Vescovo al Concilio, published
in 1983, he said that the formation of a study commission had produced hope
that the teaching might change. Another factor fueling that hope, he wrote, was
the “spiritual trauma” the issue was causing for married couples, for whom it
represented a “laceration of conscience.”

In
January 1965, Luciani gave a retreat for the pastors of the Veneto in which he
told the following story:

“A
Capuchin bishop told me at the council, ‘Sometimes I thank God that I’m a
bishop for only one reason, not for anything else. The reason is that I don’t
have to hear confessions at Easter, dealing with painful, difficult cases that
are hard to resolve. These blessed Christian couples simply don’t want to
convince themselves that the use of contraceptives is a sin. At the end I never
knew what to say … What could I say to a young father who already had six
children and he was the sole support of the family? I knew that he was a good
young man and in every other way obeyed the law of God.’

“I
assure you,” Luciani told the pastors, “the bishops would be extremely happy to
find a doctrine that would declare licit the use of contraceptives under
certain conditions ...If there’s only
one possibility in a thousand, we have to find this possibility and see if
maybe with the help of the Holy Spirit we can discover something that
previously escaped us.”

In a
recent interview, Msgr. Mario Senigaglia, Lorenzi’s predecessor as Luciani’s
secretary, recalled that his stand was well known. In fact, he said, some
Italian wags referred to Luciani at the time as “the bishop of the pill.”

Paul
VI got wind of the thinking in the Triveneto and sent his personal theologian,
Msgr. Carlo Colombo, to meet with the bishops. Sources say that during the
closed-door session, Luciani argued that Colombo’s position was “too abstract”
and did not take account of the real-life struggles of couples.

In
the spring of 1968, Luciani gave a series of presentations in parishes. In
Mogliano Veneto, the birth control question arose. His response has been
preserved in an audio recording.

“For
me, this is the most serious theological question that has ever been dealt with
by the church,” Luciani said. “In the age of Arius and Nestorius, the issue was
the two natures of Christ, and these were serious questions, but they were
understood only at the very top of the church, among theologians and bishops.
The simple people understood nothing of these things and said, ‘I adore Jesus
Christ, the Lord who has redeemed me,’ and that was it, there was no danger.
Here, on the other hand, it’s a question that no longer regards solely the
leadership of the church, but the entire church, all the young families, the
young Christian families. It is a truly central point that they are still
studying.”

When
Paul VI issued Humane Vitae on July
25, 1968, however, Luciani’s adherence was immediate and unwavering. He wrote a
letter to his diocese four days after the encyclical appeared.

“I
confess that I had hoped in my heart that the extremely grave difficulties
could be overcome and that the response of the magisterium, which speaks with
special charisms and in the name of the Lord, could have coincided, at least in
part, with the hopes held by many spouses.”

Yet, Luciani said, Pope Paul has spoken, and the proper
response is assent.

The
Pope “knows that he is about to cause bitterness for many; he knows that a
different solution would probably have drawn greater human applause; but he’s
put his trust in God, and in order to be faithful to His word, he re-proposes
the constant teaching of the magisterium, in this most delicate matter, in all
its purity.”

As
late as 1974, after he had become patriarch of Venice, Luciani publicly
acknowledged how difficult this teaching was to enforce.

“Among
couples with few children, some maintain a heroic self-control that merits
admiration,” he said at a convention. “Others … find themselves in difficulties
so serious that, on the objective plane, not even the confessor sometimes has
the courage to pronounce on the gravity of the sin, entrusting everything to
the merciful judgment of the Lord.”

The
story invites a historical “what if?” If Luciani’s papacy had endured longer
than 33 days, how would he have handled the birth control issue?

It’s
virtually certain he would not have reversed Paul VI’s teaching. The church
does not lurch from position to position like that, and Luciani was no
doctrinal radical. Moreover, in Venice some saw a hardening of his stands as
the years went by. On the other hand, it is reasonable to assume that John Paul
I would not have insisted upon the negative judgment in Humanae Vitae as aggressively and publicly as John Paul II, and
probably would not have treated it as a quasi-infallible teaching. It would
have remained a more “open” question.

Whether
that would have been good or bad obviously depends upon one’s point of view.

* *
*

Two notes from
the “keeping an eye on the conclave” file.

Cardinal Joachim
Meisner of Cologne, Germany, was interviewed recently about the World Youth Day
scheduled for his archdiocese in 2005. In the course of the conversation, the
question of Meisner’s own possible candidacy as John Paul’s successor arose.

Here is
Meisner’s response:

“The Holy Father
is strong, and the rest is only speculation. I hope that he’ll remain for a
long time. The proverb is valid: ‘Popes come and go, the Church goes on.’ As
for me, I am an old cardinal, I’m 70. The Church will need a young pope.”

What’s
interesting about the response is that Vatican-watchers have long speculated
that the cardinals will be looking for a candidate significantly older than the
57-year-old Karol Wojtyla was on Oct. 16, 1978. Many pundits have guessed the
right age range could be 65-75, which would perhaps translate into a brief
“transitional” pontificate.

If we take
Meisner at his word, and assume that his comment was more than a kind of faux
humility, we now have at least one cardinal who thinks the next pope should be
significantly younger than 70. That might boost the chances of some of the
younger papabili, such as Honduras’
Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga (60) or Austria’s Christoph Schönborn (58).

Another
much-discussed hypothesis is the possibility of a Latin American pope, as a
symbol of the Church’s solidarity with the developing world. At the recent Comunione e Liberazione gathering in
Rimini, one leading Latin American candidate got a boost from a Vatican
official.

Guzman M.
Carriquiry, an Uruguayan layman who is the under-secretary of the Pontifical
Council for the Laity, elegized Cardinal Jorge Maria Bergoglio of Buenos Aires,
Argentina.

“Cardinal
Bergoglio has become the most authoritative personality, a moral spiritual
point of reference, for the reconstruction of the nation. What strikes you above
all is his testimony as a good pastor, which unites a strong capacity for
governance with unusual gifts of humility.”

Bergoglio
, 66, who was a trained chemist before deciding to become a priest, does have a
lot going for him. He’s seen as an accomplished intellectual, having studied
theology in Germany. His leading role during the recent Argentine crisis has
burnished his reputation as a voice of conscience, and has also made him a
potent symbol of the costs globalization can impose on the Third World.
Bergoglio drew high marks when he replaced Cardinal Edward Egan of New York
during the October 2001 Synod of Bishops as general relator.

On
the other hand, Bergoglio is a Jesuit, which automatically creates reservations
on a couple of levels. One is that Jesuits are not supposed to receive
ecclesiastical honors, and there is some resistance within the community to the
idea of a Jesuit pope. Moreover, the Jesuits aren’t exactly wildly popular in
some Church circles these days, given their image as the loyal opposition to
John Paul II. Some cardinals might shrink from voting for a Jesuit, especially
a Latin American, given memories of the bitter struggles over liberation
theology.

Within
the Jesuits, Bergoglio’s reputation is mixed. He was appointed provincial in
Buenos Aires in 1973, which means that he enjoyed the respect of his brothers.
On the other hand, Jesuit sources in Rome say he was a divisive leader. At a
time when many Latin American Jesuits were moving aggressively into the social
apostolate, he insisted on a more traditional, spiritual approach, demanding
that Jesuits continue to staff parishes and act as chaplains rather than moving
into “base communities” and political activism. Eventually he stepped down as
superior in 1980.

Bergoglio
is today close to the Comunione e
Liberazione movement. Twice he has presented Spanish editions of the books
of the movement’s founder, Fr. Luigi Giussani, at Argentina’s major annual book
fair.

The
cardinal comes across as traditional theologically, but open and compassionate.

“Only someone who has encountered mercy, who has been
caressed by the tenderness of mercy, is happy and comfortable with the Lord,”
Bergoglio said at the 2001 book fair. “I beg the theologians who are present
not to turn me in to the Sant’Uffizio or the Inquisition; however, forcing
things a bit, I dare to say that the privileged locus of the encounter is the
caress of the mercy of Jesus Christ on my sin.”

One high-ranking Vatican official, who insists that he
predicted the election of Karol Wojtyla in 1978, today says he believes
Bergoglio will be the next pope. Time will tell.

* * *

I had the awful experience this week of watching someone
die, although I didn’t realize until later what I had seen.

An Italian laborer named Costantino Marchionni, 53, was
working in front of St. Peter’s Basilica on Sept. 1 when he fell 10 and a half
feet after some scaffolding collapsed. A co-worker named Salvatore
Campolattano, 30, was also hurt in the incident and is expected to recover
within a couple of months. Marchionni, however, never regained consciousness
and died roughly an hour later.

The men were working on the platform in front of St.
Peter’s for the pope’s Wednesday General Audience.

Any death under such circumstances is tragic. As an
American, I was especially struck that Marchionni perished in a work-related
accident on Sept. 1, observed in the United States as Labor Day.

I was walking across St. Peter’s Square that morning on my
way to the Press Office when I heard a loud boom. I turned to look and saw the
collapsed scaffolding, but it wasn’t immediately clear from a distance that
anyone had been hurt, so I went on my way. When I exited a half-hour later I
could see several ambulances on the steps on the basilica, so I went to see
what had happened.

I could see Marchionni, and at the time I believed he
would recover because his body was moving as it lay on the ground. Medical
personnel were giving him first aid. After a few minutes I returned to my
office.

I had realized the situation was serious when the Sostituto, Archbishop Leonardo Sandri,
arrived on the scene. Sandri is the number three official in the Vatican, the
man in charge of day-to-day church affairs, and his presence signaled that
something grave had happened. Later in the day, Vatican spokesperson Joaquin
Navarro-Valls issued a statement confirming that Marchionni had died.

John Paul II remembered Marchionni during his Sept. 3
General Audience.

“I would like to remember, together with you, our dear
brother Costantino Marchionni, who died last Monday while he was working,” the
pope said.

“We raise to the Lord our prayer for him and for those who
mourn him, as well as for all the victims of job accidents,” he added. "Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine!”
(“Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord.”)

Marchionni lost his 80-year-old mother last year, and does
not leave behind a wife or children. Italian labor unions have called for a
review of safety procedures in the wake of the accident. In the meantime, I’ll
be praying for Marchionni and for the safety of all who labor.

* * *

My colleague Gunther Simmermacher, editor of the South
African Catholic weekly The Southern
Cross, has called my attention to an 18-part series written for his
newspaper by the emeritus Archbishop Denis Hurley of Durban, recalling his
experiences of the Second Vatican Council. It’s a fascinating series of
vignettes.